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DVD Escape from New York (Special Edition)
In the future, crime is out of control and New York City is a maximum security prison. Grabbing a bargaining chip right out of the air, convicts bring down the President's plane in bad old Gotham. Gruff Snake Plissken, a one-eyed warrior new to prison life, is coerced into bringing the President, and his cargo, out of this land of undesirables. Kurt Russell put his Disney days behind him as the nicest bad guy in the picture. All comic-book sensibilities and macho posturing, this is one of writer-director John Carpenter's better brainless escapes. There are snappy one-liners and explosive action scenes. However, the film lacks tension and some believability even within the realm of SF fantasy. Even when it fails to gel, though, it always manages to amuse, thanks in great part to a varied and unusual supporting cast (watch for Ernest Borgnine as a cabdriver). Followed in 1996 by Carpenter's overdone and campy Escape from L.A.--Rochelle O'Gorman
Review(s): DVD Escape from New York (Special Edition)
One of my all-time favorites
After air force one is taken over and crashed by criminals, The president [The late great Donald Pleasance] is kidnapped in New York city which is now a maximum security prison. To get him back, The police enlist the help of war hero gone bad named Snake Plissken [Kurt Russell in one of his best roles] who they promise to make a free man out of if he saves the president within 24 hours. A nice plot and some great acting as well as action make this one of my favorite films. This low-budget early-80s action flick is a really good movie. One frightening but very interesting thing is seriously true about this movie: The scene in the beginning where the president's plane hits the world trade center is frighteningly similar to the way the 2 planes hit the world trade center on 9/11 and this film was made a full 20 years before that tragic event even happened! Anyway, the acting was pretty good. Issac Hayes even makes a pretty convincing villain in this movie. This is a great film and i reccomend this to action fans, Young and old. Needless to say, We all know what will happen in the end before we even see it, But it's definitely worth watching over and over again. Even though it starts kinda slow, It never gets boring. Followed years later by Escape from L.A., Which was really just a bigger-budgeted remake of this film. Rated R for violence and profanity. Hope the review helped. Stay up, Be blessed.
Consider Me Sheltered
Consider me sheltered, but I only recently saw Escape from New York, and perhaps the dated feeling is the reason why I gave it four stars rather than five. It's an apocolypse tale based in the year 1997, a year far gone already, in which New York has become the world's penal colony and where the President of the United States has crashed landed. The hero, Snake, must go in and save him or die. Obviously, he chooses to save the president and goes.
That's most of the story. What follows is countless scenes of action. The action is well-done and convincing if a little dated. Though I'm sure at the time of the original filming Snake was unique, he's now the common anti-hero character that dominates most Hollywood action films today. I'd recommend this movie for anyone who loves decent action flicks, cult films, or are John Carpenter Fans.
I don't givef a f*ck about your war, or your president."
Ah, even today, that line has true meaning!
Twenty five years ago, when ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK was being filmed, New York City had been a crime-ridden sleaze pit for the past 15 years, so it seemed totally conceivable to me that by the end of the century, the entire island could become nothing more than a maximum secutiry prison for hardened criminals.
John Carpenter had that vision, with a dark and chilling movie that stills rings true today in a post 9/11 city. Speaking of which, there is an early scene of Air Force One headed straight for a downtown building with the twin towers just to the left as a prison guard looks up with astonishment. It was chilling back in 1981. Now it's just plain frightening to watch.
As for the sequel, ESCAPE FROM L.A., I couldn't even get through the first half hour. I mean, how frightening can a world be that takes place on the beach under the sunshine???
Related DVD's Escape from New York (Special Edition)
Kurt Russell reprises his role as Snake Plissken, of the near-future thriller Escape from New York, in this reworking of that film's basic premise. Instead of New York being a maximum-security prison, this time it's L.A., which through the agency of earthquakes has become an island of the damned. This penal colony is where the film's future rulers, something very like the Moral Majority, send those deemed guilty of "moral crimes." But something has gone wrong in this new moral order, because the President's daughter has absconded to L.A. with a detonation device, and Snake is commandeered to retrieve it. The film's dark dystopia, with its satrical elements taking aim at our dwindling freedoms, and the eclipsing of democracy by narrow interests, are more the subject this time.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kurt Russell - Steve Buscemi - Stacy Keach Director(s): John Carpenter DVD Release Date: Released the 15 December 1998 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Howard Hawks's original 1951 production of The Thing from Another World can be glimpsed playing on a TV that fateful October evening in John Carpenter's blockbuster hit, Halloween (1978). A few years later, Carpenter reteamed with his Escape from New York star Kurt Russell to do a remake. But while the first movie version of The Thing was in atmospheric black and white, Carpenter's 1982 version is in widescreen, full color, and features some of the most revoltingly explicit, surreally imaginative special effects (courtesy of FX-meister Rob Bottin) that have ever been seen on the screen. Researchers in the remote Antarctic dig up the remains of a spacecraft that has long been frozen in the ice. But the alien life unthaws and infects the living (not only humans... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kurt Russell - Wilford Brimley - Keith David - Richard Masur Director(s): John Carpenter DVD Release Date: Released the 26 October 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Before making the original Halloween into one of the most profitable independent films of all time, John Carpenter directed this riveting low-budget thriller from 1976, in which a nearly abandoned police station is held under siege by a heavily armed gang called Street Thunder. Inside the station, cut off from contact and isolated, cops and convicts who were headed for death row must now join forces or die. That's the basic plot, but it's what Carpenter does with it that's remarkable. Drawing specific inspiration from the classic Howard Hawks Western Rio Bravo (which included a similar siege on disadvantaged heroes), Carpenter used his simple setting for a tense, tightly constructed series of action sequences, emphasizing low-key character development and escalating tension.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Austin Stoker - Darwin Joston - Laurie Zimmer Director(s): John Carpenter DVD Release Date: Released the 11 March 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Once you settle into the realization that this 1986 John Carpenter (Halloween) film is not going to be one of the director's more masterful works, Big Trouble in Little China just becomes a full-tilt comic blast. Kurt Russell is hilarious as a drawling, would-be John Wayne hero who steps into the middle of a supernatural war in the heart of Chinatown. While kung fu warriors and otherworldly spirits battle over the fate of two women (Kim Cattrall and Suzee Pai), Russell's swaggering idiot manages to knock himself out or underestimate the forces he's dealing with. The whole thing is dopey, but it's supposed to be dopey and Russell's game performance brings an ironic edge. Carpenter directs some nifty spook effects (the sudden arrival of three martial arts demigods from out of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Kurt Russell - Kim Cattrall Director(s): John Carpenter DVD Release Date: Released the 27 August 2002 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A strong candidate for the designation of most thrilling action movie ever made (the turbo-charged exhilaration of its full-throttle highway chases has never been equaled), the second part of George Miller's post-apocalyptic trilogy is also a magnificently imagined movie myth. Like the Star Wars trilogy (by that other George) the Mad Max films draw their inspiration from the works of mythologist Joseph Campbell. In the 1979 original, Max (Mel Gibson) is a policeman, the last guardian of civilization and order in a devastated world reduced to chaos. But when a leather-clad gang of sadomasochistic speed demons mows down Max's family, his remaining connections to humanity are also permanently severed. After brutally exacting his revenge, Max wanders off into the wasteland... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Mel Gibson Director(s): George Miller (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 25 September 1997 Usually ships in 8 to 10 days
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